This week’s edition of “I really need to practice drawing” comes in the form of sketching my outfits. Which I suck at, but I might try and do this more often as it is good practice and also quite interesting (for me) to see what I actually wear. Like most people I have a lot of clothes and suspect that I barely wear half of them, so perhaps if I keep this daily outfit thing up I’ll be able to weed out the things that I really don’t need to keep!

It’s been a while since my last sketchblog post, because I’ve done that thing where I’ve mislaid my drawing mojo. I know I’ve said this before but it bears repeating: I’m not someone to whom drawing comes naturally. I have to really work at it. Which isn’t a bad thing, I mean I can draw well, but when I go too long between drawings I lose confidence and then I sort of tense up. When I’m tense my work is absolutely shite, it really is. My drawings are at their best when they’re loose and feel alive, but when I’m lacking in confidence I tense up and overwork things: I try to get things too precise, and that’s when it all goes tits up.

I did a bit of practice work a couple of weeks ago to try and get to grips with perspective, for a very specific project that I have had in mind for a while, but I’m not sharing those yet. Today I’ll share what I did last night. Nothing thrilling, but I was reading a magazine on my Kindle and decided I’d just draw bits of it as I went along (and also making some notes). Just an exercise in loosening up again, a bit like stretching to warm up before going for a run (as if I’d ever do anything as crazy as running, ha! But you get the idea). Oh, yes, and I’ve abandoned my usual sketchbook for the time being and am using a cheap crappy notebook, just to take away another aspect that I have issues with (namely not wanting to muck up a decent book).

I have a deep-seated dislike of artificial sweeteners. The taste of most (all?) of them makes me wince, and one in particular (aspartame) triggers migraines. So it’s getting increasingly frustrating that soft drink manufacturers are swapping out real sugar in their drinks and replacing it with artificial sweeteners. Barrs, I’m looking at you. Stop trying to avoid the sugar tax and just give us our sugar, don’t you realise people will rather pay more for a beverage they can drink without making themselves ill?